"Gaslighting is a form of psychological abuse in which false information is presented to the victim with the intent of making them doubt their own memory and perception. It may simply be the denial by an abuser that previous abusive incidents ever occurred, or it could be the staging of bizarre events by the abuser with the intention of disorienting the victim."¹ This is a form of abuse that runs rampant in religiously motivated abuse, at least in the experiences of pretty much every survivor that I know. It's also one of my biggest triggers.
Gaslighting comes in all shapes and sizes. The term gets it's name from the stage production "Gas Light". In this play, a husband sets out to drive his wife insane by making small changes to her environment and then denying that any changes were made when she noticed them. In particular, he would dim the gas lights that were lighting the house and insists that she is imagining it. I've experienced very similiar, but I've also experienced gaslighting in much more convoluted and destructive ways.
The easiest (well, the first to come to mind, it is not by any stretch easy to relate) example I can give you is the "shapes" game that I had to play with my uncle when I was very little. He would use brightly colored cut out shapes and lay them down in front of me and then a minute or so later he would set a screen in front of them and tell me to tell him what shapes I saw. Sometimes, he would let me win. Other times though, he would go to great pains to completely undermine my memory of what shapes I saw with horrible punishments if I didn't change my answers to what he wanted them to be. Sometimes, he would move the screen away and the shapes would still be what I initially thought they were but I still had to tell him that I saw the shapes he said that I saw. Sometimes, the shapes would actually be what he said that I saw. If you can't see how this would seriously fuck with a very young child, count yourself lucky I guess. I would certainly rather not have to live with the memories of being sexually and physically tortured as part of his sick little game.
This leads me to the crux of how having a trauma history involving gaslighting can make group dynamics very hard for me. I honestly wish sometimes that we could remove the word "never" from the english language entirely, so that I would not have to ever hear the words "we never do that here" when I've just experienced "us" doing exactly what it is you've just said we never do and have empirical evidence of that fact. It is extremely hurtful to have my memories continually undermined by a group where I am supposed to be safe and valued.
I don't have any quick answers for how to act instead, but I would ask that the next time you find yourself forming a statement like "we never do x" or "x never happened" that you would take a few moments and really think about it and try to find a more affirming way of saying it. I promise, it is possible to communicate that something is not *your* experience without completely discounting *mine*.
